1.
A social norm that significantly influenced my food choice began when I came to college. Back at home, my family would mainly eat food that has low sugar and fat and would eat less desserts or snacks. For example, we would eat steam or boiled food rather than friend foods. However, after I came to college, this choice was hard to maintain as dining halls provided foods that have high sugar and fat. Of course, I did eat these kinds of foods before and actually enjoyed them but they weren’t my daily meal. Therefore, when I began constantly consuming high sugar and fat, it ruined my body and health system. The social norm here would be that our society does not provide healthy options when it comes to feeding mass groups of people, like college dining halls. The food choice is mainly connected to convenience rather than health.
2.
The main societal issues that connects to the food choice I addressed above would be the food waste and unhealthy diet. Food waste is one of the biggest problem our world is facing. Each year, one third of all food is wasted and in the U.S alone, 40 million tons of food waste in created. In places like college dining halls, great amount of food goes to the trash as students unthoughtfully take food as they think they can eat but end up realizing they took too much. Food waste is the sad truth in our world. We have many organizations and campaigns that tries to help millions of people who cannot be provided with food. However, unlike how we support these organizations we still create food waste that could have helped those people. Moreover, the food choice clearly serves unhealthy foods that does not encourage healthy diet. Eating high sugar and fat would lead to problems like obesity which is one of the big threats to U.S and which is also leading to the same problem with food waste. We need to appreciate the food we are provided. Through this activity, I concluded that the social norm should be changed to creating and consuming foods that has low sugar and fat and limit the amount of food created in areas that serve big number of people.
3.
Hi Eunice! My name is Lisa. I talked about a lot of the same things in my entry so I would love for you to check it out! Here’s a link to my blog: http://geog030.dutton.psu.edu/2016/03/02/module-6-5/
So when reading your entry, I could really relate to what you were saying. I also experienced the same thing when I came to college. It was very important to my family that we eat healthier food. Once coming to school, I never realized what eating fried food with lots of fat and sugar can do to your body. In my entry, I talked about how my family always provided nutritious foods. It was also important to my family that even if I did not like something that I had to eat it because we did not want to waste any food. Overall, I loved your entry and could really relate to it.
Hi Eunice, my name is Alyssa. Here’s the link to my blog post if you want to check it out: http://geog030.dutton.psu.edu/2016/03/02/obesity-vs-food-waste/
I found your post really interesting because I agree with your claims. The dining halls at Penn State do not offer a lot of truly healthy options. The food they get for our meals is cheap and provide very little nutrition. I also agree with your ideas about food waste and how because the food is unhealthy, many students choose to throw away a significant amount. This definitely is a social problem that should be addressed!